With a jerk, I sat up, trying to orient myself. A little bit of nausea lingered, as well as a splitting headache. “Where am I?”
“Hancock Center,” Eve replied. “My office.”
She sat across the room from me in a cushioned roller chair near a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. Behind her, I could see the expanse of Lake Michigan, a view that was interrupted by one of the building’s huge diagonal crossbeams. On the horizon, the blue of the water met the blue of the sky.
Eve cocked her head over her bony shoulders. She had an enigmatic smile on her face. Her almond-shaped eyes still looked alien. She had a pen in her hands that she stroked in an oddly suggestive manner. Her lush blond-and-brown hair swept messily across her shoulders. She pulled her chair close to the sofa and leaned forward, looking at me with an intense, curious expression.
“Did you go there?”
I knew what she meant. “The Many Worlds? Yes, I did.”
“Was it what you imagined?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. I got off the sofa and had to brace myself, because my legs were unsteady. I crossed to the windows and stared at the vista. Chicago looked the same. “Why are we not at Navy Pier? How did we get here?”
“Navy Pier? I don’t understand.”
I turned away from the windows. “That’s where you gave me the injection.”
Eve shook her head. “No, we’ve been in my office the whole time.”
“I’ve never been to your office before.”
“Actually, you’ve been here half a dozen times. We’ve been working through your grief over Karly. But today was the first time we tried my new therapy.”
I sat down again and tried to puzzle out what was happening to me. By saying the escape word, I should have gone back to my world. The real world. And yet my surroundings all felt brand new.
“How long?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“How long have I been here?”
“Today? About five hours. That’s quite a bit longer than most of my patients experience in their sessions. I was starting to get concerned. If it went on much longer, I was debating how to bring you back. But I assume you finally said the escape word.”
“I did,” I said, after a moment of silence.
She sensed my hesitation. “Dylan, it may feel strange, but you really are back where you belong.”
Was I?
Then why did everything feel different?
“I don’t remember any of this,” I told her. “Your office. The sessions we’ve had. I don’t remember the past few weeks at all, other than being in the Many Worlds.”
“That’s not surprising. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect of the treatment.”
“Because of the psychotropic drugs?” I asked.
“Psychotropics?” she replied with surprise. “Where did you get that idea? All I gave you was a simple muscle relaxant to put you in a receptive frame of mind. The rest is hypnotic suggestion, and then... well, it’s up to your brain to take it from there. However, the intensity of the experience can leave patients extremely disoriented. Your memory typically comes back after a while. It may take a few hours, or even up to a few days. Given how long you were under, I’m not entirely sure what you can expect.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember my recent past, but the only experiences that were vivid were what I’d been through in the other worlds. I could still remember the violence and death I’d seen there. I could feel it. My hands were raw where I’d squeezed them around Dylan’s neck. I could taste Karly on my lips.
“This hypnotic suggestion you gave me,” I said. “How did that work?”
“Before we began, you picked a place that you wanted to use as your ‘portal.’ The place where the various versions of yourself would intersect.”
“And that was... ?”
“The Art Institute,” Eve replied with another curious smile, as if she knew I was testing her. “So that’s where I told you to go.”
I got off the sofa again, feeling restless. Everything she said made sense, but I was having trouble leaving the experiences of my hypnosis behind. “This will sound like a strange question, but are the police looking for me?”
Surprise creased her face. “The police? For what?”
“Murder. Four women were stabbed to death. They’d all attended events at my hotel.”
“Murder? God, no, there’s nothing like that. I’m so sorry, you must have gone through horrific things while you were under. That’s very unusual. Most patients don’t have experiences that are nearly so... violent. In fact, most of them never make it out of their portal. But I take it you did.”
“Yes.”
“You actually went to other worlds?”
“I went to several worlds, but the first time—”
“Yes?”
“The first time felt like it was the real world. That’s how I remember it. I don’t recall getting there through the Art Institute. You even had me say the safe word for you in that world, and nothing changed. I didn’t come back here. I don’t understand how that could be.”
“The safe word only works if you’re aware of what’s happening to you,” Eve replied. “Your brain may not have been ready to process the experience yet.”
I thought about that world and everything I’d experienced. The insanity. The violence. The doppelgänger breaking into my life. Of course, none of it was real. Of course, I was already deep inside Eve’s therapy.
So why did being here feel wrong?
“I’m distressed if this was traumatic for you,” Eve went on. “That was definitely never the point of the therapy.”
She sensed my disorientation and tried to reassure me with a smile.
“Look, we obviously need to talk about everything you experienced,” she went on, “but it’s better if we don’t do that right now. You need time to process. We can set up another appointment in a few days, and you can fill me in on what you went through. In the meantime, hopefully your short-term memory will begin to come back, too.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“It might be better if you don’t drive yourself home.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m starting to feel better. But I do have some questions. With my memory gone, I need to know — well, I need to know more about who I am. I’m a little lost about what’s real and what’s not.”
“Certainly. Ask anything you want.”
I paced back and forth in her office, trying to gather my thoughts. Eve’s desk was on the opposite wall, and I ran my hand along the oak surface. She had a copy of her book there: Many Worlds, Many Minds. It matched the book I’d purchased in the hotel ballroom, at a time when I still thought I was in the real world. When I picked it up and turned it over, I saw the same photograph of Eve that I’d seen in the poster for her event.
“Dylan?” Eve asked. “Are you okay?”
I put the book back down on her desk. “I guess so. You called me Dylan. That’s my name, right? Dylan Moran.”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
“Where do I work?”
“You tell me,” she replied. “It’s easier to get your memory back if you let your brain help you. Where do you think you work?”
“I’m the events manager for the LaSalle Plaza Hotel.”
“That’s right.”